Ham radio for people with disabilities. A weekly podcast from the Courage Handiham System, http://handiham.org.
Ham radio topics, including accessible equipment, blind ham radio, events, policy in the Amateur Radio Service, more.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The new hybrid radios
Amateur Radio operators of a "certain age"
(like me) grew up in the days of vacuum tube equipment. Transistors
didn't come into widespread consumer use until the second half of the
20th Century, and tube-type ham radio transmitters, receivers, and
transceivers ruled the roost for quite some time, even into the early
1970's when transistors began to creep into low-power signal circuits
and audio stages. Hybrid rigs showed up with tube finals, and then
finally high power solid state became reliable and cheap and transistors
and integrated circuits became the norm. Today old radio gear still
has a certain cache and thus a following. Some collectors like to
gather on bands like 75 meters and operate AM phone with the vintage
gear. I enjoy listening to 3.730 MHz AM in the early morning hours as
the old gear gets a workout on the air.

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Welcome to Handiham World.

Will we see more emergency communications emphasis in 2015?

Maybe. There was a surge in emergency services volunteerism and communications following the 9/11 attacks. Today we are waking up to what looks like a horrific terror attack on a newspaper office in Paris. Climate reports are also just out following the analysis of 2014 data, and the news isn't good there either since 2014 was the hottest on record according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, pointing to weather extremes that could create more destructive storms and aggravate wildfires in 2015.